As an avid lover of German beers, I’ve been been a fan of the Doppelbock. Malty, fruity yet powerfully high in alcohol content. It’s a deceptive beer, easy drinking but packs a punch.

Naturally, this was a challenge for my system. I use a BIAB (Brew in a Bag) on my stove top. Although my 15 gallon Megapot can handle a high gravity beer, it would be a stretch to use a massive grain bill. I said what the hell and tried it out. One sore back and 6 months later, I was happy with the result but now am looking to improve.

The other barrier to entry for a doppelbock on a BIAB system is the historic german mashing method of decoction. The Decoction is when a portion of the mash (when the grain mixes with water) is pulled out and boiled it. The boiled mash is then added back into the main pot, raising the overall temperature and also imparting a more malty, caramel flavor. The mash that is pulled out is actually a rather dense mix of grain and water. Originally, I thought that the decoction would be solely wort but the grain imparts a lot of flavor.

The next trick is the fact that doppelbock, with it’s high alcohol content, usually requires several months of “lagering”. Lagering is allowing the beer to condition in cold temperatures and a challenge against my well known lack of patience.

First, I had to come up with a recipe. After some research, I landed on this:

Overall Brewing Entry Log

Decoction:
Pulled 3 gallons of the thick mash (both grain and liquid) and boiled it separately, then added back in.
The Bag was so heavy that I couldn’t lift it up without a second set of hands. This is very much the reason for the sore back and something I would not recommend. Definitely a limit of the BIAB process unless you have a pulley system or something.

One new technique I tried was recirculating. I would draw off some of the liquid and gently pour over the bag of grain during the mash several times. This increased the OG (original gravity, basically the higher it is the more potential for a higher alcohol beer).

I pitched the yeast at 58F after letting it cool down in the chest freezer.

After about 2 weeks, I had my first stuck fermentation. The beer hovered around halfway complete during the fermentation. I went to the store and bought 2 packs of liquid yeast (WLP833 german bock) and threw it in there to jumpstart it, which worked wonders.

In order to make room in my limited chest freezer, I also removed the beer and let it sit at room temperature for a week (70F). I then returned it to the chest freezer for another week in the 40F range.

Brewed: 1/21/16
Pitched more yeast: 2/5/16
Kegged: 2/28/16

Tasting Notes

Strong, malty with a bready flavor. Definitely higher notes of alcohol than I’d like. Hoping that with more time it might mellow out.

Overall not my best beer, but a good attempt at a doppelbock. I will update on version 2 and 3 especially changing up the variables of having more time at a lagering temperature.

10 Month Update

I really wished I took everyone’s advice to let this one age longer. After 7 months, it really hit it’s stride but by then I had most bottles already given away. This is one of those beers you need to let chill, literally, for a long time.

Learning how to keg your own beer will definitely shorten your brew schedule. Since the beginning of my brewing career I have always bottled, however as I’ve started to brew more often I have found bottling to be a serious pain in the ass. I even got to the point where, gasp, I didn’t brew because I didn’t want to bottle which seemed like a chore.For a long time, I would collect bottles, especially the 22oz craft beer ones, and use those because the 22oz bottles allowed me to sanitize about half the bottles I would ordinarily need to. I still found it tedious and often put it off. Whether it be my laziness or the process, I decided something should change but never had that push to go buy a $200 kegging system until….

As luck would have it, I met a guy who hadn’t brewed in a while and was incredibly generous enough to give me two pin lock kegs with fittings since he hasn’t used them in a long time. This stroke of luck was just the push I needed to jump ship into kegging. But first I had to learn how to keg.

Since this is new for me, I’ve collected age old advice and some of my own wisdom around my first few encounters with kegging to give you a beginner’s guide on how to keg beer.

Here’s the minimum equipment required:

keg

regulator

co2 tank

beer lines, gas lines, and connections

fridge/chest freezer/kegerator

The first thing you’ll want to do is to clean the kegs. This is especially true for used kegs since you will want to replace all the o-rings. For a more in depth view at cleaning the kegs, check out how to clean a keg.

Now that you are an expert on cleaning kegs, let’s move on to actually how to keg beer.

There is some debate on how to actually keg. My opinion is that there is no use in sweating the small stuff. It’s beer, not world peace. If you are impatient, go with the Rolling Method. If you don’d mind waiting or fear over-carbonation, go with Slow and Steady. The part that everyone agrees on is that you definitely have to clean the kegs once in a while and you need to sanitize before each use.

Sanitize the Keg

Next step is good ole sanitizing.

Gas on left (2 prongs), beer on right (3 prongs)

Since I am relatively new to kegging homebrew, I’ll take you through my sanitization process. I tend to go for what is easiest and the least amount of work. Some people sanitize a different way, and that’s totally fine.

I fill up the keg about halfway full and use the appropriate amount of sanitizer (I prefer No Rinse Star San). I’ll leave it to sit for a while, and then seal up the top. Flip it upside down. Let it sit for another few minutes. The point is you want to get all the crevices and nooks sanitized so you don’t end up with an infected beer.

I also poke the gas in and beer out poppets pictured below. This ensures that the sanitizer goes into those areas.

Next, I’ll close the top and hook up the gas. Then I connect the beer out line. Push the sanitizer out the beer out line which will sanitize that as well as the inside of the beer dip tube which extends all the way down.

Many times, I will clean and sanitize my kegs immediately after use. I’ll store them with sanitizer in them and put some gas on it (around 5 psi). That way, when it’s time to transfer beer from the fermenter into the keg, all I have to do is empty it out and it’s good to go!

Slow and Steady Method

Set it to serving pressure depending on your style of beer and leave it for a few weeks. I typically put mine to around 12 PSI while in the chest freezer (temperature greatly affects Co2 absorbtion).

Pull a pint off every now and then to test for carbonation levels. Modify the PSI to desired level.

Ready to drink!

Rolling Method

For those who don’t want to wait a few weeks for the carbonation this method is for you. This method can carbonate the beer much much quicker than other methods but it comes with a drawback. There is a much higher chance of over-carbonation with this method due to the high PSI and shaking involved.

Chill the keg beforehand to your keg serving temperature which is usually 38F to 42F

Chill the Co2 tank as well

Fill the sanitized keg with your fermented homebrew

Seal it up and using a Spray bottle with Star San, spray to test for leaks. Leaks will look like little air bubbles coming up.. Reseal if you have to.

Set the PSI to around 30, shaking every few minutes. Alternatively, you can gently place on ground and roll back and forth.

Do this a few times for 24-48 hours.

Purge the Co2 (press on the gas out poppet with a screwdriver) to release the gas

Once in a while I have an ultra burst of productivity. Could be from the mix of boredom while I’m waiting for a mash temperature to be reached or a boil to hit it’s stride. In this case, I was incessantly fiddling with a Weissbier recipe and needed to distract myself so I didn’t continue screwing with mash temps and decoctions.

So in a moment of humble bragging and brewing pride, here is the most productive brewday in (my) brewing history:

Set up Brewer’s Friend on a trial membership (ended up buying it, highly recommend).

Set up the Fast Ferment conical plastic fermenter but subsequently realized it doesn’t fit in my fermentation chamber. Will be mounting to the wall or giving to a friend to ferment and then will review.

Finally gave about 6 old growlers a solid Oxyclean soak after sitting in my brew cave for a few weeks.

The stout recipe below is one of my house recipes. I’ve been brewing this stout recipe for a few years and tweaking each year. It makes a great holiday beer for the chocolate/coffee richness of the stout that is cut through with the mint. Enjoy!

Beer Type

Stout (Specialty) Recipe

Ingredients

Size: 5.5 gallon batch

Grains

1 lb black (patent) malt

1 lb caramel/crystal 80L

.5 lb (8 oz) chocolate malt

Base Malt

10 lbs 2 row

Hops

1 oz Kent Golding @ 60 minutes left

1 oz Kent Golding @ 15 minutes left

Yeast

S-04 (Safale)

Gravity

OG: 1.051
FG: 1.018

Beer Making Process

Started at 8am, ended at 1pm. Not bad for my BIAB (Brew in a Bag) process. I usually take my time and relax during brew days.

Started with 9 gallons of water. Added a campden tablet, which removes the chloramine in the tap water and helps keep it neutral (or so I read on the interwebs). Took me about 50 minutes to get up to a mash temp of 160F. Overshot my mash temp a bit, so had to stir to get it down to about 155F. My notes, if we are being exact, were to “stir like a motherfucker”.

Mashed for an hour, twisted my bag to drain and ended up with about 8.5 gallons for pre boil. Since I boil on my stove (see below) I recently added my electric heating element to speed things up. I’ve had no complaints so far and it really helps to speed things along.

Around 11am had the boil going, so added the first hop addition.

Meanwhile, sanitized in a bucket the tubing for the transfer from the kettle to the fermenter along with the airlock, blow off tube and fermenter. Kept some sanitizer aside to put into a spray bottle which is great when you need to sanitize quickly without whipping up a big batch.

Also kept some sanitizer to put in a growler for use with the blow off tube. This enables the beer to not have any baddies from floating into the fermenter from the blow off.

About 15 minutes from the end of the boil, add 1/2 oz of peppermint leaves (I prefer these, make sure they are pure peppermint). This adds up to about 10 tea bags of peppermint. I also add the chiller here to sanitize it. After 15 minutes is up, kill the heat and crank the chiller.

12:30p- Wort was down to about 80F. Filled up 5.5 gallons. 1 gallon left to trub (that gunky stuff left in the kettle, mainly hop residue). Pitched the yeast at 75F with the fermenter set to 65F.

Brewed 11/15/15.

Kegged 12/5/16. (First batch kegged, and not a bad stout recipe to be first)

Tasting Notes:

Solid beer. Even the non-beer drinkers gave it a go and enjoyed it. The peppermint is much stronger in the beginning and fades quicker with time. I would estimate about 3-4 weeks before the mint favor is faint. The typical stout flavors, over time, come to overpower it. So if you wait long enough, it’ll be a typical coffee/chocolate flavor stout. Still enjoyable but less peppermint. I love this stout recipe and will continue to keep it rotating on draft.

For me, Learning how to clean a keg is much easier than it seems. I should know, this is still a relatively new process for me. I remember getting my first keg, it almost felt like it was…..yesterday. Well, not yesterday but just a few months ago. Close enough.

I happened to be at a Oktoberfest party where the owner is a former homebrewer (are we ever “former” homebrewers?). He had some equipment collecting dust (and a few bugs, too) in his garage. After talking for a while, he graciously gave them to me. With 2 new (used) kegs, I was stoked to get away from the pain in the ass that is the world of bottling and into the wonderful world of kegging.

How to Clean a Keg

The first order of business was to clean the kegs since they had been in a garage for several years. With that being said, I present to you a beginner friendly version of how to clean a keg.

The kegs featured are pin lock kegs, which are fundamentally different than ball lock. Pin lock have different “gas-in” post and “beer-out” post which helps make keeping track of which is which much easier. Beer-out posts have 3 prongs and the gas in have 2. I remember it, in my simple brain, as 3 is more than 2 and beer is more than gas.

Gas on the left, Beer on the right

First, time to fiddle around and hope something doesn’t break…I mean dissemble the keg.

Use a screwdriver to press down on the gas out post, to ensure there is no pressure inside the keg. Better safe than having it blow up in your face. Then remove the top. Then you can remove the posts. For pin lock kegs, you need a special tool, a wrench also works, to unscrew (pictured below).

Now you will want to verify that all the parts you need are in the keg (if used). You will typically need the following parts and you’ll disassemble them:

gas tube (sometimes very short going into the keg)

beer dip tube (very long to the bottom of the keg)

beer out post

gas in post

keg lid

O-rings around the dip/gas tubes, posts and lid

Once you have all the parts, grab your cleaner and make the appropriate mix. I use Oxiclean Free but you can use PBW (powdered brewery wash) or any other home brewing cleaner.

Time to Strip

The next step on how to clean a keg is to check the keg parts. I remove all of the O-rings from the gas and beer posts, the poppets inside the posts as well as the big o-ring around the keg top. Make sure they all look good and in working order. If you notice anything off about them, or aren’t sure their history then I recommend an o-ring replacement kit. They run about $3 and are worth it when you see wear and tear on the o-rings.

Once you replace all o-rings, make the mixture of cleaner and water inside your keg. I typically use half of the recommended amount in 2.5 gallons of water and swirl it around. Leave it for a few minutes. I also put all the poppets, posts, etc into a small bowl along with some of the cleaner as well.

After a few minutes pass, seal up the keg and flip it upside down. Let it soak again. The whole soaking process could be anywhere from a few minutes to overnight depending on how nasty the keg was.

Once you have sufficiently destroyed any dirty bugs that could ruin a delicious home brew, it’s time to rinse out the keg with some hot water and flip it upside down to dry.

At this point, I’ll store the keg (dry) with the lid dangling inside but still open.

Now you know how to clean a keg! Now it’s ready to sanitize for the next batch. Much easier than de-labeling 50+ bottles! However, if you do need to bottle, this article can give you the lazy way to clean bottles.